“Next to my Beaver and my Maple Leaf” was a photographic project born of the controversy in the House of Commons and throughout the country as a whole over the licensing rights of the Canadian Mountie, the involvement of the Disney Corporation and their control over that inherently “Canadian” image. “Next to my Beaver and my Maple Leaf” consisted of a life size hand coloured photograph of a Mountie and his trusted plastic Canada goose. They were erected at various functions art fairs and exhibitions throughout the Province of Ontario over the period of a year. The original project took place in 2000, the year that Disney’s lease on the Mountie expired and the image reproduction rights returned to the Mounted Police Federation. People were invited to pose with the free standing Mountie and be photographed celebrating the reclaiming of a national icon. A number of the images were printed as post cards and mailed to Disney.

M2 M3 M4 M6 M7
         
M8 M9 m100 m101 m102
         
m103 m104 m105 m106 m107
         
m108 m109 m110    
     

There is no other police force in the world any better than the RCMP. It represents the best of Canada, both past and present. I suspect it will also represent the best in the future.
What did the government decide to do? It decided to sell the rights of making money off the RCMP to Walt Disney. Disney now has the right to market Mounties around the world. There are little Mountie dolls, Mountie hats, Mountie statues in China, in Taiwan and it is all done by the great corporation of Disney.
If there is anything that is kind of embarrassing, I will bet the House leader for the government that there is not a single Canadian, other than himself, who thinks this is a good deal, who would actually stand up and say that one of the best things we have done as a Liberal government was to hand over the RCMP selling rights to Disney.
The government endorsed it. It liked this idea. I can imagine the members getting all excited and having a party that night when that happened. That is where we are. “We sold out the image Mountie to Walt Disney. Okay, we have done that”. There goes a little Canadian heritage out the window. “Why not privatize the national parks? We will call it commercialization or we will call it a special agency”.
I think I will leave it at that and simply end by saying that as New Democrats—thanks to our critic, the hon. member for Churchill—we have looked at this bill. We have talked about it in caucus at some length.


Mr. Nelson Riis (Kamloops, NDP):